Monday, October 11, 2010

lost michelangelo

A family in Buffalo, N.Y. may have had a painting worth $300 million tucked behind their living room sofa for 27 years, reports the New York Post.

An expert has analyzed the painting and believes it to be a lost Michelangelo -- an unfinished painting of Jesus and Mary -- potentially one of the biggest finds of the century.

How did the family get the painting?

Its history points to the work being done by Michelangelo around 1545 for his friend, Vittoria Colonna. The Pieta painting was passed to two Catholic cardinals, eventually ending up in the hands of a German baroness named Villani, according to the Post.

The work ended up in the family after Villani willed it to her lady-in-waiting Gertrude Young. Young was the sister-in-law of Kober’s great-grandfather and she sent the work to America in 1883.

Now in a bank vault, the painting, according to experts, is estimated to be worth hundreds of millions - perhaps, like those seen at the New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art -- even $300 million.